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30 January 2015

Troika is an artist trio
based in London: Conny Freyer, Eva Rucki, and Sebastian
Noel.

“We are three people with different
sensitivities…The question becomes how do you synthesize that? How do you grow
bigger than the individual?” asks Sebastian.

When they worked on a piece, Conny observes, “…the dialogue became almost as
important as the physical outcome.”

Sebastian agrees: “…this idea of collaborating
together, the collective, is very important…it’s a way of working out in the
process the idea we are exploring.”

So, what is the idea to which he refers? In the video below they explain a work featured in June
2014 at Art Basel, a modern art gallery in Switzerland. The piece is called Dark Matter. A word of explanation:

If you were told to make a
square circle you would likely say, “You’re off your rocker! You can’t make a
square circle. A square can only be a square and a circle can only be a circle.”

Well, Troika shows how these
two shapes can truly be one. In fact, they go one further. In Dark Matter, Troika expresses three shapes in one form.

The key is perception. As you
change your viewing stance, the square becomes a circle and the circle becomes
a hexagon.

So what is Dark Matter: a circle, a square or a
hexagon? It is all of these and none of these all at once. It is three-in-one.

For Troika, the embodiment of
three distinct shapes in a unified form signifies more than a clever way to trick
your eyes. It is a statement about reconciling contradictions through a “greater
order.” Here are some excerpts* from their exposition of the work.

“People reveal truth through
science…people reveal truth through faith…they are put in polar opposites all
the time…Is there a possible synthesis between those things? Can you be
religious and rational? Can you [do] art in a logical manner? Can science be
subjective?”

“Instead of trying to put
things in a box, which is like the premise of modernism…or postmodernism that
accepts everything, we are trying to reconnect those two and try to see if
there is not something higher than that, a greater order that would synthesize
those things?”

Some might call it an
artistic representation of post-postmodernism. At PlayFull we can’t help but
call their process play, an expression of unified distinction.

View the video. It’s
fascinating to see how they reconcile three contradictions.

22 January 2015

"We have to reprogram our minds to believe that
the work of our artist selves is at least as important as the work of our
housekeeper selves, our yard-maintenance selves, our parenting selves, and our
workaday world selves. By allowing our artist self to blossom and grow, we will
be enhancing all those other selves, including the part of us that cares for
and nurtures others." -Janice Elsheimer, The Creative Call